Agree with many points, disagree with a few of the more general points. I really like the way this was broken down and itemized so I put my 2 cents in bold and italics beneath each point that I felt informed enough to respond to.
I. GENERAL
Difficulty:
I completed a play-through on normal, hard, and POTD. No Scaling options. Custom Party usually consisting of a Lifegiver and multi-classed melee. No desire to play casters apart from Druid.
Overall the game was very easy, even through POTD. My party composition was able to essentially autoattack to victory, with help from the new AI scripts and healing from the druid. Only on POTD did I feel like I had to do some slight party management with consumables/tactics.
AI Scripts:
Excellent. Looking forward to seeing where this goes. But makes the game much easier.
Watcher visions:
Huge improvement being able to watch the visions instead of having to talk with some spirit for 5 minutes.
Dialogue:
Still suffers from too much descriptive text. Please don't tell me what I'm seeing and how I feel about it. It's usually too verbose, doesn't add any substance, and often reduces the RP.
Classes:
Multiclassing is good. However, I would like to see this go a step further and make this even more of a classless game. Give us all of the abilities and let us build our own class. Something closer to D:OS and the other POE.
Don't really agree with going classless, that is a step too far from the core concept of POE1 and the Infinity Engine games that spawned it. Plus this would make balancing abilities much, much more difficult.
Combat Speed:
Needs to be slowed down. Both in movement speed and damage to health. Most fights decided within seconds.
II. BALANCE
Passive v Active abilities:
The class resource system is really punishing compared to passives. Passives give powerful buffs during all moments. Most active abilities can only be used 2-4 times per fight, and compete with each other for class resources. Very rare for me to select an active ability over a passive.
At the very least, I would recommend more way to replenish class resources during fights (such as sworn rival).
Melee v Ranged:
Melee are much stronger than casters. By the time many spells are cast, the fight has essentially been decided by the melee. The cast/recovery/class resource costs for spells are absurd compared to melee classes which rely much more on passive abilities and autoattacking.
Agree, the spells take way, way too long to cast and many damage spells are easily shrugged off by the enemies. I just don't get why the cast time is so long -- against trash mobs this makes casters too late to the party and against difficult mobs by the time a spell is being cast often the situation has changed and I need to switch to a different spell. Casters just have so little impact compared to high damage melee chars.
Dual-Weilding:
As other have pointed out. Way too strong compared to 1-H/2-H.
Not enough competing talent options:
You end up picking the same abilities/passives for each class. No real variation.
Spells generally:
Such a hodgepodge. With the ability to choose this is not such a big deal, but spells really range widely in duration, cast time, power, etc. Most of which are meh, will never be used and make the game feel bloated and unpolished.
Agree though this is still the beta, so we can expect more polish and less bloat. It is a little concerning how weak casters are, I would have expected a much tighter balance given the experience the team has to draw on from POE1.
Armor/Penetration:
Way too important. Stack Armor and stack Penetration on every character. Downsides to heavy armor nothing compared to the damage reduction it brings and are offset easily by other abilities/potions.
Weapon Modals/Proficiency:
Rarely worth using, 100% recovery is way too penalizing. Makes proficiency system immersion breaking as I would never want to use these modals.
Also, we are given way too many options for proficiency. I shouldn't be able to be proficient in four weapons just because. At the very least, don't force me to choose more proficiency. My Roleplay of a toon that only likes one weapon shouldn't be forced into being good at others. Most characters only seem use one type of weapon the whole playthrough anyway... let alone four.
Strongly agree, it makes proficiency seem really like an afterthought. Proficiency should be more powerful and require more commitment so the choices are harder and more meaningful.
Injury/Health/Healing System:
The injury system is good. But...
The removal of the POE1 Health system has made healing rather absurd. Either I'm regenerating enough that I never drop below 90% or the mobs spike me so hard that I have to spam heals. This reminds be of TBC era Wow healing where raid bosses had to do absurd amounts of damage because that was the only way to counter the heavy healing.
Further, thematically many abilities no longer make sense: Second wind now instantly heals wounds? Standing around after combat for ten seconds heals wounds? It made much more sense when it was to renew stamina.
Also, why potions STILL have instant heals is mind-boggling. Josh made a mod for FO:NV to remove the absurd pause and insta heal with potions and food that is prevalent in Fallout and Skyrim. Healing potions should always be over time, never instant. I absolutely loath that I can pause the game, and instantly heal for 75% of my health with one click.
Agree... I actually thought this was either a bug or an oversight it seems so obvious an issue.
Potions:
Potions in general are far too strong, as they were in POEI. Potion of Deftness gives 6 accuracy and 25% action speed. That is a talent point and over 8 dexterity in value. Way too much. As with health potions, the effects are practically instant (1.3 seconds). This makes using potions much more important that almost any other consideration. Potions should be heavily nerfed and have much longer durations
Agree although this is somewhat understandable as POE1 is presumably the balancing baseline. Potions shouldn't be nearly as decisive as they are, instead well-built characters and gear (which feel more important and rewarding from a gameplay and lore standpoint) should be the biggest variables in addition to actual tactics.
Drugs:
As with potions they are far too strong. Mouth Char gives +1 armor and a whopping 20% damage to weapons. Durations are much better than with potions, but for all the hoopla over pre-buffing before POEI, I'm surprised these made it into the game. Should be heavily nerfed.
On the flip side, the drug crashes are good, but probably shouldn't be so punishing.
Food:
Perfect. This is exactly how the system should be implemented. Long duration, low value, only one at a time. Excellent.
Rest buffs:
Good overall implementation. Thematically rest is important and having a resting buff should be almost mandatory. My only complaint is that the different resting bonuses from each inn option are a bit silly in the variety, and some of the effects are far too strong. Like consumables, rest should give long term, low value buffs. I would like an option to have negative penalties for lack of rest.
III. AI
Pathing:
Mobs still run around like morons taking disengagement attacks all over the place.
Consumables/Buffs/Empower:
My biggest gripe is that the AI never seems to use consumables. If we can use them, the AI should too. D:OS pulled this off. Why is my party the ones ones with the capability of drinking a potion mid fight, or having rest buff. This is an immersion killing and removes much of the tactical challenge of fights.
Also, why do we get empower and not the AI?
Offscreen Aggro:
Mobs need to have bigger aggro chains. Too many mobs being singled out because they were too far away from my party when I pulled.
Also... some mobs should not just blindly chase. Make us go to them sometimes without requiring an ambush scenario.
AI Interruptions:
I do like how the AI appears to wait until I'm casting something to counter with an interrupt. But, this is another reason why casters are inferior to melee.
Agree with all of these arguments though I assume Obsidian is working diligently on them already.
IV. IMMERSION/ROLEPLAY
Character Creation and Skill Points:
Backround, Class, Culture should not affect skill points. STOP THAT. Let me choose how to build my character. My devoted fighter should not have a point in explosives. My nature druid should not have two points in explosives. My timid orlan should not have more intimidation than my aumaua just because she is a kind-wayfarer. My laborer should probably have points in Mechanics, not Athletics.
Why are you forcing these absurd RP choices on us in a CRPG?
While I do not feel as passionately, I do agree with the argument.
Spell selection on level up:
I love how classes (Druids in particular) are able to choose spells on level up instead of having a bunch of junk automatically thrown at them. This allows me to role-play the character I want and allows more interesting choices/tradeoffs on level up. I am sad that they decided to give priests automatic spells on level up, I would have just given an extra spell selection point instead of forcing a particular set of spells. More options is (usually) better than having them selected for you in an RPG.
Overland Map:
It's a bit jarring to go from the beautiful maps to the meh overland map. The point and click movement feels so dated, and like a crappy mini-game. At the very least, slow the ship down.
Further, I loath at the omniscient ability to see herbs and equipment caches from so far away. This is terribly immersion breaking. Why does my party know about some magical boots on the other half of the island??? Similarly, why are you telling me that this zone is too high level for me? STOP THAT. At least make it optional. Don't magically tell me things about the world my character should not know. Where did this hand-holding come from? We didn't get a warning pop up for the Temple of Eothas and the game was much better for it.
Combat only abilities/Pre-buffing:
Still immersion breaking to only be able to use some abilities out of combat. The whole purpose was to avoid pre-buffing... but then they made ridiculously overpowered drugs and potions. This is contradictory design.
I just don't get why we have this Overland Map. It is worse than jarring, it really does feel like a cheap mini-game. This is probably because it was sort of baked into the backer stretch goal. We can only hope this aspect gets better. Manual movement on the map is annoying, especially on the ship where it was not clear that you have to find the Dock Icons to actually disembark, that was so confusing the first time. What was wrong with POE1's old-school maps and simple travel?? If the magic ability to see caches and encounters is going to stay the way it is (i.e. you see them instantly from any distance), I really hope this "mode" gets better UI, better feel (like slow the ship down). This game is not like Heroes of Might and Magic or that genre of games where the Overland Map travel is actually designed to be a key part of the game experience. It feels cheap and tacked on.
This is actually the element of the beta I found the most jarring and annoying.
Storage:
I was never a fan of the magical bottomless stash. It has reached new levels of absurdity when I'm collecting huge loads of cannon shot and ship repair supplies. Another immersion killer.
Agreed, although perhaps in the full game the whole Ship aspect gets a big content boost. Even so it makes sense to limit the stash so you are forced to make tactical management decisions. This affects gameplay and not merely immersion.
V. MISC
Modding:
Please make modding relatively easy as has been suggested it will be. We were promised robust modding in POEI and that didn't happen.
Allowing the community to tinker solves so many issues and increases the replayabilty.
Starting Zone:
Please allow us to break free to explore immediately or shortly after game start. I loath tutorial zones. Having to go through the camp, the talking, and the ambush, and the talking, and the berry hunt, and the talking, and the storm, and the talking, and the tutorial dungeon, then the 2nd storm, and the RP, and the talking, and the talking, and then through Valewood... every... single time... ugh. Drop me into the game and let me go explore as soon as possible.
Don't make me repeat the same start every play-through.
Spell selection:
I love how classes (Druids in particular) are able to choose spells on level up instead of having a bunch of junk automatically thrown at them. This allows me to role-play the character I want and allows more interesting choices/tradeoffs on level up. I am sad that they decided to give priests automatic spells on level up, I would have just given an extra spell selection point instead of forcing a particular set of spells.
Empower: Nothing particularly wrong with it. Just doesn't really make sense Lore wise that I'm aware of and seems kind of arcadey. Also rarely used with little impact in the grand scheme of things. Seems like a lot of development work to force in this remnant of the vancian spell-casting system.
Feels very arcade-like since there are no abilities, skills, items, or any other mechanic that affects Empower. For example maybe Obsidian can allow casters to get more Empower than melee to balance out the fact that they suck right now. Maybe talents offer more Empower uses, or different effects based on the spell or ability being empowered. And of course enemies currently don't seem able to Empower though again this is only the beta.
Firebrand:
Actually looks like a fire sword now. \o/ (But a 6 second cast is laughable. It should be instant and last for the entirely of combat.)
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Gameplay Review (2.0886)
in Backer Beta Discussion
Posted
Agree with many points, disagree with a few of the more general points. I really like the way this was broken down and itemized so I put my 2 cents in bold and italics beneath each point that I felt informed enough to respond to.